


The Hero of Eichenwalde

by xKvinnan



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Drabble, Flash Fic, Grief/Mourning, Injury, Loss, One Shot, Permanent Injury, Regret, Scars, Self-Doubt, Survivor Guilt, Takes place right after Honor and Glory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24199096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xKvinnan/pseuds/xKvinnan
Summary: Reinhardt Wilhelm is a Crusader. A fearless warrior, a paragon of justice and victory. He doesn’t just fight battles, he wins them.And now, Eichenwalde has been lost. His brothers and sisters in arms have been slaughtered by the dozens. General von Adler – his leader, his mentor, his best friend – is dead.Because of him.Reinhardt reflects on his choices, and decides where to go from here.
Kudos: 5





	The Hero of Eichenwalde

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and feedback are much appreciated!

Three days after the fall of Eichenwalde, I left the hospital.   
I hardly remember being injured at all; with the adrenaline and the shock and the ecstasy of the battlefield, I never had time to feel it. I remember how the blade looked as it swung toward my face, and I remember the heat, but there was no pain.   
The gash stretched from my forehead down to my cheek, swollen skin held together with a row of strained stitches. The doctor said the wound appeared to have been cauterized immediately by the heat of the blade; though it kept the bleeding to a minimum, the deep damage done to my skin and facial muscles would be difficult to repair, and I’d never see from my right eye again. I was lucky to escape with my life, he says. But I didn’t feel lucky. 

I remember the night I returned to the Crusaders’ quarters in Stuttgart, leaning over the sink, looking at the reflection in the mirror, a face I couldn’t reconcile with my own. Breathing deeply and slowly. Trying to hold it together.   
This gauze-wrapped face, with its deep lines and its hollow unshaven cheeks and its one sunken eye, wasn’t my face. The man in the mirror didn’t look like a fearless warrior. He looked damaged, weary, exhausted by the weight of what he had seen and done. He looked haunted. This was the face of a man who had known defeat, who had tasted bitter loss.  
The face of a man who had no one to blame but himself.   
Four days after the battle, I threw away the eye patch that the doctors had given me. I needed to see the scar. It reminded me who I wasn’t. 

Five days after the slaughter, we buried seventeen fallen Crusaders. My brothers and sisters in arms. My friends.   
The battle left only three survivors among our ranks. One of them, a low-ranking recruit, had managed to mostly avoid injury by holding his position at the back of the line behind the more experienced soldiers. It had been his first battle as a Crusader; he had been so excited to try his armor in battle. Another, a major, took a hail of gunfire to the back as she tried to shield her unit. Her armor saved her life, but her injuries were still severe. She would never walk again.   
Word had already spread about what I had done. Oberleutnant Wilhelm, throwing himself into harm’s way to save his squad of foot soldiers, holding the line even as his comrades dropped around him. Saving not only the lives of his unit but countless lives in the city by stopping the omnics’ advance.   
The hero of Eichenwalde, they were calling me. The survivor. They congratulated me on my glorious victory, told me about the honors and medals I should receive once the war was over.   
I was no hero.   
I hated every second of it. 

The Crusaders’ funeral was as brief as we could make it. The soldiers we were able to recover were buried in their armor, their caskets covered with the colors of the country they gave their lives to serve.   
Four bodies remained unaccounted for. Balderich’s was among them. Even after so long, Eichenwalde was still a war zone; it was too dangerous to send a crew in to retrieve them.   
We agreed, the three of us who remained, that the General’s armor should be returned to where it had fallen after his body was recovered. A monument to his courage, his sacrifice. He’d died the kind of glorious death we’d all dreamed of.   
The medallion he gave me weighed heavy in the pocket of my uniform. His last gift to me. His dying wish.   
I would travel to Switzerland and join the strike team. I would stand among the most skilled and decorated soldiers the world had to offer, the heroes that had been chosen to end the Crisis once and for all. I would appear before them, young and scarred and so naïve, and I would tell them who I was, and why Balderich von Adler had sent me, and why he couldn’t answer the call himself.   
I would take his place. Stand where he was meant to stand. It would be my name written in history, not his.   
Wasn’t it what I had always wanted? A chance to prove myself? To show the world what I could be?  
Well, I got what I wished for.   
My best friend, my mentor, was dead because of me, and now it was up to me to fill the hole he had left. To be a leader.   
I saluted the coffins as they were lowered into their graves, a last goodbye to my friends.   
No tears came to me. I was numb. 

Ten days after the General laid down his life for me, I left for Switzerland.   
I would not get to see him laid to rest.


End file.
